CC: Legion
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: Part of the Chaotic Circumstances verse. The HSL discovers that more than a few people dressed in the same costume. Now they have to track down and help the legions of Supermen and Spidermen roaming LA. And maybe a few Supergirls too.


Title: CC: Legions

Author:Joshua

Disclaimer:Superman belongs to DC Comics, Spiderman belongs to Stan Lee and Marvel Comics. Their various incarnations are . . . too various to list one by one, but more than likely you'll find most if not all of them in various issues of the comics, cartoons, TV shows, and movies.

Summary:What happened to all those people that dressed up in the same costume, if everybody that did wear a costume was transformed into it?

Story:

"/_Continuing our coverage of this breaking news story, I'm Tony Lane and this is the Evening News,_/" the reporter on the television introduced himself. He was sitting behind the main news desk of the Channel 6 News station for LA, his black hair chiseled into ideal perfection, matching perfectly with his dark navy suit and flawlessly crafted skin. Despite the stereotypical image he presented, both he and the subject he was covering were quite serious and he managed to convey that very well.

"/_Los Angeles has been plagued for several months now with various sightings, in what can and has been openly identified as reported vigilante superheroes. It began with an incident involving the mugging of several teenage girls spending the day at the mall. Security cameras caught evidence of the mugging, yet the tapes never revealed how it was the young girls managed to overpower or get away from their attackers. Their statements to the police claimed that someone dressed as and apparently had the abilities of "_/Superman/_" flew down and subdued the muggers, leaving them tied with a couple of iron bars the same man grabbed from a nearby sewer grating._

"/_Since then, there have been numerous sightings of men or other people flying through the air over the LA skyline. Most claimed that they thought it had something to do with the shooting of a movie, however all the studios in Hollywood are claiming that they have nothing to do with the sightings, nor with the vigilantism._

"/_An interesting turn however, is instead of just Superman, there have been sightings and witnesses claiming to have seen or been rescued by "_/Spiderman/_"! Again, Hollywood studios denied involvement, and Marvel Comics owner Stan Lee merely commented that if there really was a Spiderman out there, he'd love to meet him. In other news . . ._/"

Jake Berenson reached up and tapped the control panel, the monitor freezing the newscast image. Then he slowly turned his seat around to face Buffy Summers and Detective David Stein.

"We'll talk to him," Buffy immediately promised, looking rather guilty.

"Spiderman?" Jake asked instead.

"That's what you're surprised about?" the physical reincarnation of the Savage Dragon asked incredulously.

"I just want to know what the heck is going on, that's all," Jake explained his reaction of calling them both in. "I thought Robert was Sunnydale's only real Superman?"

"A lot of people dressed up for Halloween, Jake," Buffy reminded him, "And nearly all of them, with maybe one or two exceptions, bought their costumes from Ethan's. Given how popular the characters are at all, it really shouldn't be too surprising that there's more than one out there. Good news though, is that it doesn't look like any of them are abusing their powers and stealing bank vaults or anything like that."

"We need to follow up on this all the same," Jake pointed out, ducking as somebody walking by with an arm full of computer and technology parts, narrowly avoiding getting beamed in the head. "If only to find out who is doing this so we know how to limit the media attention on Sunnydale. We are all still agreed that we don't want the Federal Government involved here, right?"

"Duh!" Stein sarcastically remarked, while Buffy nodded in agreement.

"Buffy," Jake shrugged as he was quickly falling out of his areas of expertise, "just . . . see what you guys can dig up. Detective, I'd appreciate it if you were the one to talk to Robert and see if he's discovered or if he knows of any other Chaotics that dressed as Superman. I'd love to give you two more help but . . ." he merely gestured at the chaos going on around them as the infantile HSL was still trying to get its HQ built.

"No biggie," Buffy grinned in acknowledgment, which told Jake that she was still just glad to not be in his shoes, even though if she'd chosen to be she could have been.

"I'll ask around, maybe get a hold of some of my contacts, and I will ask Robert and William about anything they might have seen, but don't hold your breath," Stein promised.

"Just do what you can, that's all I ask," Jake said, then sighing he got to his feet and got back to the more laborious work of putting the walls together. Buffy and Stein walked out, both going their separate ways once they were out of the briefing room.

/_The Library_/

"You agreed to that?!" Xander exclaimed loudly in Buffy's face.

Everyone of the X-Slayerettes were in the Library, plus Giles and Jenny. Buffy had just told them all the assignment Jake had just given her, IE them, and which angle they'd be taking. Specifically, that they would be tracking down all the alleged Spiderman sightings in and around Los Angeles.

"Hey," Buffy calmly protested, pushing Xander back enough to give her some space, "we all agreed on the chain of command when we set up the HSL officially. Jake's the boss, like the Professor if that'll help. Besides, it doesn't change the fact that it needs to be done. Stein, uh, I mean Detective Stein will be checking with Robert and they'll follow up on the Superman sightings with the Powerhouse Team. And I figured since we've already got Iceman . . ."

"Har dee har har," Xander droned, crossing his arms.

"Where do we start?" Oz grunted from where he stood in the corner.

"Where else?" the mutant slayer shrugged, "The eye-witnesses."

/_Los Angeles_/

"Nooooo!"

"C'mon! Get her! Get her! GET HER!"

A screaming young girl, looking to be no more than 15 at the most, ran as fast as she could down a blind alley, not knowing where to go or if anywhere was safe, just trying to get away. On her tail no less than a full dozen men, none looking too friendly nor what you might call dressed for success. At a glance anybody could see what the situation was and what was going to happen unless the girl either miraculously got away or somebody managed to stop the gang. Although to be honest, nobody would have bet on both happening at the same time.

Once she reached the end of the alley, seeing that it was a dead end with nothing but brick walls on three sides and no windows, doors, or even a fire escape to leave by, she turned back the way she'd entered, but stopped, seemingly terrified when she heard the sounds of her pursuers catching up. Her blonde hair flew out in all directions as she cast about for any way out. Suddenly, she looked up just as the first of the gang rounded the corner.

Those gang bangers and all their friends coming in behind them suddenly skidded to a halt, some of them slipping to the ground while most of them rammed into the backs of those that had already stopped. The reason for this sudden halt in the chase was immediately evident. The girl was gone, and there was no way out.

"What the…?" most of them wound up asking themselves and each other.

"Now, now, now, what would a bunch of numbskulls like you be doing in a gutter like this?" a voice echoed down from the rooftops, freaking out the already confused gang. "Oh, I know! You're trying to promote yourselves from numbskulls to gutter trash, right? Just stutter stupidly if I'm right."

"WHO THE HELL ARE YOU MAN?!" the leader of the gang shouted up at the shadows. They were just out to have some fun with a hot chica when all this weird crap started happening!

"Your worst nightmare," a whisper spoke from within the center of their midst.

"AAAHHHHH!" they all screamed and jumped away. When they looked again, they saw nothing. Until they looked behind their leader and he really started freaking out when his posse stared behind him with wide eyes and shaking hands. Slowly, he turned around and barely stopped himself from screaming.

"Sorry about that," the white-eyed black figure said conversationally to him, "I've always wanted to say that. I really shouldn't though, because sadly, I'm not Batman…"

The figure suddenly flipped around and they only realized after the fact that he'd been hanging upside down up until that point. When he stood straight, barely even reaching the gang leader's nose, they saw that he was dressed up in a black and gray jumpsuit with an altered ski mask over his head, making him look like some kind of superhero. Then, they finally recognized the web-like pattern that had been etched into the stitching of most of the costume and the realized what was going on here.

"… I'm Spiderman," he finished his earlier statement, right before slamming a fist into the gang leader's face and sending him flying to the end of the alley, over the heads of the rest of the gang, Total KO.

"Now," the masked 'hero' said as he leaped over their heads and stuck to the brick wall above them, "I know what you're thinking." He proceeded to jump all over the alley like a pinball, slamming powerful punches and kicks with each jump. "How can this guy possibly be Spiderman? Spiderman's not real, right? What if this guy's just some loon with an obsession with the Wall-Crawler? But then, how can he do all the stuff he's doing if he's /_not_/ Spiderman? Answer," with every question he'd taken out roughly three gang bangers, all without even losing his breath or any other signs of exertion, until finally they were all unconscious by the time of his 'answer', "I may not be Peter Parker, but I am /_definitely_/ the Real Spiderman! Oh yeah, whose bad? I'm bad, that's right! Oh yeah!" He went on and did the moon walk against the side of the building for a couple of seconds before finally ending his impromptu celebration.

"Now I just need to leave these guys somewhere for the cops to take them in and I'll…" he was saying.

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!" a voice of authority screamed out. When 'Spiderman' turned and looked, he saw a police officer in black uniform and gun in hand, pointed right at him.

"Oh… crap," the young hero sighed and then proceeded to leap and jump until he escaped to the roof, the nervous cop shooting at him the whole way. "I hate it when that happens! Happens every time too."

Once he was above the rooftops, he shot a web line to a taller building a few hundred yards away and used the momentum of his swing to soar even higher amongst the high-rise business districts of Central LA. Still keeping up a commentary to himself as he let the simple motion and brief exhilaration of swinging through the air calm him down after his run in with the overanxious cop.

"Sometimes I just wonder why I'm even doing this, it's not exactly worth it after all. Didn't even get a girlfriend out of this deal, and no, I could have gone the selfish route and gone on TV, or joined a gang, or even started my own, or made a career as a stunt double in movies for crying out loud! But /_noooo_/ I had to be /_responsible_/, with great power and all that... crap. *sigh* Doesn't exactly help that I live in LA instead of New York, as that map I've got in my head is no help at all! Oh and look, more cops. Although they seem to be going somewhere I'm not..."

The young hero looked down upon hearing a whole lot of sirens, and watched as a veritable army of cop cars peeled out onto the highway, lights and sirens flashing the whole way. Spiderman watched and quickly determined just which car they were all chasing, mostly from the very erratic high speed it was traveling at, but also the occasional gang banger that leaned out one of the windows firing heavy caliber machine guns.

"..." Spiderman really, really, /_really_/ wanted to turn around and go home right then, but instead he shot out a web line that would allow him to follow along above the chase. "I really hate my life sometimes."

Some high-flying webslinging and outlandish acrobatics later, he'd caught up with the police chase just as it exited onto the by-pass. Timing it just so, and praying that his spider sense did not fail him, he swung and landed himself on the roof of the white SUV. Shortly after, it started swerving like crazy and he had to dodge the bullets they were firing into their own ceiling.

"Just GREAT! I had to hitch a ride with the psychos from south side! HEY!" he shouted into the driver side window, "PULL OVER ALREADY! WHATEVER IT IS YOU'RE TRYING TO DO, /_yikes_/!" He had to dodge as the driver shot out his own window. Now hanging from the /_side_/ of a speeding and out of control vehicle, he poked his head up to finish shouting, "YOU'RE GOING TO /_KILL YOURSELVES_/ FIRST! SO SAVE ME SOME TIME AND EITHER STOP OR GO AHEAD AND CRASH!!"

Almost in reply, the Korean gang bangers started shouting at him, pointing their guns, and the driver did one better by driving full on into the wall of the freeway. Spiderman's spider sense warned him just in time and he jumped clear, angling around so he could launch another web line to a nearby riser and continue pursuit well above the action with plenty of dodging room now.

"OK, they're either on drugs, or completely insane," Spiderman said to himself. "Let's go with the former for the moment, because I really don't want to deal with them if it's the latter. Whoa! Now what?!"

Suddenly, from the horizon, crashing almost straight through a couple of buildings and a near miss with an airplane on approach, a dark figure streaked through the sky and zeroed in on the car below. Unfortunately whoever or whatever it was didn't zoom in fast enough as they crashed through one of the overhang signs while in pursuit. Spiderman's covered eyes went wide, partly at the sheer amount of debris and shrapnel the impact caused, which subsequently forced several police cars to crash, but mostly due to the fact that it didn't even slow the flying object down. In fact it sped up after the fact.

The wall crawler wasted no time in webslinging and netting the bulk of that debris, also grabbing a couple of the police cruisers and kept them from spinning out of control or hitting their fellow cops. The whole expenditure took about a third of a minute, the rest either too small or in no danger of hitting anyone, but the bulk he managed to leave netted under the overpass where the webbing would dissolve in about an hour. By the time he turned his attention back to the chase, the flying man had landed himself, quite forcefully, in the back seat of the white SUV and seemed to be talking with the gang bangers. So they shot at him.

Something seemed to piss him off about that because the next thing he did was he shoved his feet /_through_/ the bottom of the car and stopped the car like it was something out of a Flintstones® cartoon! Unfortunately, real life is not a cartoon and this tore the road up something fierce so that by the time the SUV was actually stopped, about half a mile of the road was torn up like somebody took a hoe to a patch of dirt!

"Oh boy," the webslinger gulped, choosing to hang off the side of a building to watch the next part he knew was coming. And yep, there goes the car, picked up by the flying man like it was a piece of styrofoam.

He followed, discreetly at a distance until the flying man dropped the car on the top of a building, which just happened to have a spire on top of it, which quickly speared through the hood of the now completely destroyed SUV. Shortly after that, the flying man dropped all three gang bangers on the /_top_/ of the spire which their (probably stolen) vehicle was impaled upon before flying off, looking a bit drunk as he did so.

After a full minute, Spiderman finally swung over to the punks hanging precariously by their shirt tails, making sure the guy wouldn't be coming back, and asked the kids, "So, uh, what exactly did you guys say that pissed him off so much?"

"We don't know man! We just... uh, how are you doin that?" the talkative one spoke.

Currently he was standing directly below them, his feet sticking to the large spire like most people's feet stuck to the ground on a hill. Looking down and comparing their position to his, he pointed to the painted black spider on his shirt and remarked, "Duh!"

"No way!" Mr. Talker exclaimed.

"Way," he just nodded. Then he sniffed them, and said, "You shot up his liqueur bottle I take it?"

They blushed and didn't say anything for a bit.

"Right," Spiderman scratched the back of his head in embarrassment. "Well, if I knew him, I'd probably give him a stern talking to about that sort of thing, but..."

"Dude! It was Hancock!" one of the other two screamed.

Spiderman blinked beneath his mask. "Whoa, seriously? Cool! Wait, before I get you guys down, I just have got to know," he paused, making sure they were listening before screaming as loud as he could, "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU GUYS THINKING DRIVING LIKE THAT!?! YOU WEREN'T GOING TO GET AWAY, YOU WERE GOING TO BE DEAD! So, seriously now, what were you guys thinking?"

"Uh, looked like fun?" the last guy weakly replied.

Spiderman just stared at them.

"All right, that does it," he sighed and tore them down before wrapping them up in full-body cocoons of webbing and left them hanging anew from the top of the spire. Then he quickly took out a note card and black marker and wrote with his non-dominant hand "I'M NOT WITH HANCOCK, BUT AT LEAST THESE GUYS WON'T BE HURTING ANYONE ELSE NOW. - Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman!"

Then he swung off and just in time too as the first helicopters and emergency crews were starting to show up. Half an hour of solid web swinging later, he finally swung into an old fort in an even older tree in the backyard of a suburban home. Thanks to the skylight in the tree house, he landed solidly in the middle and pulled his mask off in safety and perfect security.

Beneath the mask, one would see the Spider/_man_/ was really only about 17 or 18 years old at the most, with dark brown hair, chocolate brown eyes and a well-sunned complexion. Taking off the rest of his Halloween Costume, as well as the more functional boots he'd substituted the costumes for, he changed into a typical teenager outfit of jeans, t-shirt and sneakers. Then for added measure, he put on a pair of red wrist sweatbands and a pair of transitional sunglasses that /_used_/ to be prescription but were now just plain glass.

"Dan!" a female voice called out from below. "Daniel Patrick, are you up there?"

"Uh, yeah mom!" he called down, looking over the trapdoor/ladder that allowed one to enter and exit the tree house. "I only just got up here a minute ago! What's up?"

"Your father's home! He wants you to mow the lawn, and I need you to swing by the store down the block for some milk and bread for dinner. Come down already!" Mrs. Patrick shouted up to her son.

"Uh, right! Be right down," Dan sighed and considered just jumping down before settling on the slower route and started climbing down the ladder. "I really should have thought this superhero thing through. Can't even get out of doing chores for crying out loud!"

/_Sunnydale_/

/_HSL Headquarters_/

"So, any ideas?" Buffy asked the big green fighting machine next to her.

"I'll talk to him after school," Stein said.

"I sincerely doubt there's some kind of mystical connection between Kryptonians, despite what you read in the comics. He won't know about these other Supermen than we will," she pointed out.

"So what's your suggestion, Ms. Superhero?" he asked in a snide tone.

"That's why I was asking if you had any ideas," she shrugged helplessly.

"Perfect!" he growled and slammed a fist into and through the wall.

"DRAGON!!" a voice shouted out, echoing throughout the subterranean base.

"Uh, let's just go to LA and see what we find out?" Stein suddenly and nervously suggested.

Gulping despite herself, Buffy quickly found herself nodding and saying, "Yeah, good idea. Let's go!"

_R&R Please!_


End file.
